


The Lime Tree

by brassmanticore (Ilyas)



Series: Xhind series [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Transgender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:10:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilyas/pseuds/brassmanticore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There's a glossary of invented words on my blog: http://brassmanticore.tumblr.com/post/119720256169/i-found-the-glossary-document-finally-under-a</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's a glossary of invented words on my blog: http://brassmanticore.tumblr.com/post/119720256169/i-found-the-glossary-document-finally-under-a

Anu Riyamn had year-old twin girls and she was pregnant again. Riyamn was away at school, so there were six kids left, Amnah who was fourteen, Orrnah who was nine, Umayn who was six, Ishuza who was four, and the twins. I was so busy with all the laundry and cooking and sweeping and mopping that I did not notice Maghris getting slower and more tired until she was no longer able to make it up the stairs and I was doing everything. But I don’t think anybody else had noticed either, since I was covering for her.

 

Baba moved a cushioned chair from upstairs into the outdoor kitchen, and Maghris sat in it and pared vegetables or spun. Frequently she dozed. I heard Anu Riyamn telling Ba to find her another servant, and I thought it was just because Maghris was getting old and she needed someone younger and stronger to wash the floors and haul the laundry up to the roof.

 

_Come_ , Maghris signed to me one afternoon. _I told you that when you were twelve I would tell you about the Bilarnis. You are old enough now._

I had completely forgotten about it, but I came and sat at her feetand while she talked Irolled grape leaves around balls of rice and mint and bitter lime and packed them into crocks of brine for the holy month.

 

_When I was your age, I was already a warrior_. _I hunted mountain goats wherever I caught them at the foot of the bluffs or on top of the bluffs, and I was sweet on a mixed-spirit girl named Susa. The people who worship her may tell you that Susa was a man, but she was more than that. She was both male and female, although she preferred female, and she was the moon in my sky. The Bilarnis believe that each person has only one spirit, male or female, and you can’t be both, but we believed that some people had two spirits, mixed together, although sometimes one is stronger than the other. Susa’s female spirit was a lot stronger than her male spirit, but she wasn’t the only mixed-spirit person in our tribe. There were a few others._

_Maghris,_ I interrupted. _Could I be mixed-spirit?_

_You could I guess, do you think you are?_ She signed. _That would be a perfectly fine thing, but I don’t think others would understand anymore. The Bilarnis made certain of that._

_How will I know if that’s what I am?_ I asked.

_Well, there are no more mixed-spirit people for you to talk to, as far as I know. But listen to what I tell you, and think about it, and maybe you’ll know._

_Is that why you were never bothered by my wanting to be a boy?_ I asked.

_Yes, child,_ Maghris signed.

_What do you mean when you say the Bilarnis made certain of that?_ I asked.

_I mean they teach that you can be one thing and one thing only and you can never change, and anything else is a perversion, against the natural order of things. But my Susa was perfectly natural. When she was a child they thought she was a boy, but as she got older she knew that she was more female than male. Her hair was like lamb’s wool, her eyes like black stones, her skin red like the bluffs. She had a thick waist and little breasts and strong thick arms. She was a warrior, and she wore fringed breeches and bare chest._

My face boiled at the mention of breasts, but Maghris was lost in memory.

 

_And she was a prophet too,_ Maghris continued. _She could read omens and sometimes even tell the future in the shapes of flocks of birds and in the yolks of bird’s eggs we collected in the bluffs. It was she who foretold the coming of the Bilarnis and the end of our people. That was the first prophecy of hers that our tribe doubted._

_Did you believe her?_ I said.

 

_I believed her, and I felt sick with dread. But she just kissed me and said that it would come to pass some day, but it hadn’t happened yet, and we should enjoy the spring weather. And she jumped in the wadi and splashed water at me until I took off my leathers and got in._  

 

_The Bilarnis came in a ship. We saw from the top of the bluffs when they anchored out in the bay. Their puffy sail was small and white as a cotton boll against the blue-green water. Their ship looked so harmless and pleasant, but Susa was worried. “They will kill us all,” she said. “It’s just a trading party,” someone else said. “And we are warriors, strong and plentiful.” Everyone agreed. Susa often led hunting parties, but she was not elected to lead the party that went down to the beach to meet the ship’s boat. I was the only person who voted for her._

 

_Usually the ships that came to trade were from the Kanaaf Islands to the south-east, but these were a new people, unknown to us. They said they were Bilarnis. They brought Kanaaf Islanders with them to translate and act as pilots. They had salt and rice and trade beads and metal arrowheads, and they looked at our leather, but what they really wanted was to convert us. They offered a string of beads to any of our people who professed faith in their One God and renounced all of ours. We just laughed at that. How could we give up faith in the sun and the moon and the wind and our ancestors? We might as well give up faith that the sun would rise and children would be born and rains would come._

_“How can she prosper who does not honour the sun and her ancestors?” someone said._

_“By honouring the Bilarnis,” Susa said._

_“What?!” The same woman said._

_“We should accept their One God,” Susa said. “We will thrive if we do, and disappear from the earth if we do not.”_

_“How can you say such a thing?” The same warrior said._

_“I can see what will happen,” said Susa. “Everyone knows this. Haven’t I been right countless times before?”_

_“You’re not right this time. You’re not talking sense.”_

_The Bilarnis merely stood and watched us argue. The others looked at Susa sidelong and turned away. Somebody spat. The warriors had always doubted Susa’s abilities a little because of her former life as a boy, but never before had they doubted her prophecies._

 

_We went back up the bluffs with fewer goods than we had hoped. The Bilarnis hadn’t really wanted to trade unless we converted, but that was fine. There would be other ships from the Kanaaf Islands soon and we could send the men to dig ground nuts instead of eating rice. I didn’t say anything to Susa, but I began to think that the tribe was right. These Bilarnis were irrational but harmless, no threat to us, and they would soon be gone._

Maghris was tired. She left her tale there and went to lie down. Her face was grey and lined and her movements stiff and slow. She was clearly very tired and getting old. I worried about what the new servant would be like and what would happen to Maghris after she was replaced. Maybe Ibu and Anu Riyamn would let her live out her old age in peace. She had been serving them tirelessly since before I could remember.

 

Maghris continued her tale in bits and pieces while I cleaned fish and chopped vegetables and did the mending, anything that would have me sitting near her and watching her hands for a while.

 

_The Bilarnis also approached the Artilan tribe, a goat-footed and spiral-horned people, and it seemed they had more luck there, for soon Artilans were seen wearing trade beads around their necks. My tribe scorned them for giving up faith in the world around them and predicted their downfall, but Susa insisted they would prosper. And so they have._

_Do they still exist?_ I asked, surprised. All of this seemed like a story, not a true tale.

 

_They no longer live in the city, as the Bilarnis eventually banned them, but they still live in the bluffs in the caves which were once their homes and are now the tombs of their neglected ancestors. And we Qilula are perishing and disappearing from the earth, as Susa said we would, because we did not accept the Bilarnis’ One God._

Anu Riyamn came into the kitchen with one of the twins on her hip. “What are you telling her?” She asked Maghris. Maghris shook her head. “You’ve been talking a mile a minute all week. I don’t know what you’re up to, but stop it. I don’t want you conspiring behind my back or putting ideas into her head. She has enough of them already.” Maghris nodded. And so she was confined to telling me her story during afternoon nap time, but that meant neither of us got a nap. At least half the time Maghris fell asleep or I did.

 

When the time for the afternoon nap came, Maghris said, _I would not normally disobey Anu Riyamn,_ _but this is important. Listen, child._

She sat at one end of our pallet off the kitchen and I sat at the other, knees pulled up to my chest.

 

_The hot season was approaching and we packed up our winter village and set out for the summer village. We went through the mountains and into the inner desert. There was a huge red rock plateau there which, in ages past, a river had run through and carved out a twisting pathway into its heart. At the heart of the plateau was a cleared-out area where we had an amphitheatre and a ball court. In the walls we had carved out rooms going far back into the stone. The rooms were cool and comfortable even in the heart of summer, and there were more of them than we needed. There were plentiful wells as well._

Cicadas buzzed in the trees. A baby was crying upstairs, but everything else was quiet. The house baked in the heat and I laid my head down on my crossed arms. I could still watch Maghris like that. I had been up since before dawn. Maghris could go back to sleep after breakfast now, and Ba even told her to, but I couldn’t. There was only the afternoon nap.

 

_When the summer was over we went back to the winter village at Telmak, but we did not find it as we had left it. In the centre of the plain next to the beach the Bilarnis had built a village out of stone and mud and wood. They had built their village right around our well! And they had not asked our permission. We called a council to decide what to do about the Bilarnis…_

I woke up, and it was cooler. Maghris was asleep, and Anu Riyamn was coming down the stairs. I scrambled up and into the kitchen to stir up the fire so she could start cooking dinner.

That evening, Maghris said to me, _Come here, I need to talk to you._

_I’m sorry,_ I signed. _I tried to listen but I was so tired._

_I’m not talking about that,_ she said. _When I die, you must take my body to the top of the bluffs and leave it there. Make sure no one disturbs it or removes it._

_But Maghris –_ I had never even been out of the house, except to go underground. How could I possibly take her to the top of the bluffs?

_No buts. You must do this. I know you can do it. My body will be broken up and scattered to the sky with the vultures and to the four corners of the world with the coyotes and foxes, and I will live on in freedom. I don’t want to be trapped underground._

I had none of her faith in me, but I couldn’t tell her no. It was dark by then, so Maghris stopped talking and we lay down and were soon asleep.

When I woke up the next morning before dawn, Maghris’s body was flaccid and cooling on the mat beside me, her eyes wide open. She was dead.

 

I looked at Maghris’ corpse lying there, and I didn’t know what to do. I was always sent elsewhere while the Maghris and Anu Riyamn washed and prepared bodies, I didn’t know what was involved, and I couldn’t take Maghris’ clothes off. So I washed her face and hands and feet and wet down the loose strands of hair and closed her eyes with stones, and sat there and wondered what to do next.

 

The only people who'd died in my memory were infants or small children. I'd seen them carried past on the shoulders of the men, little bodies shrouded in white and decked with greenery and lashed between two poles, if they were big enough. Anu Riyamn buried the afterbirth or a swatch of hair under the fruit trees in the centre of the courtyard, so that their souls in Paradise would remember where their home and their family were.

 

Maghris feared being trapped under ground, but I wanted her soul to remember me, and to visit, if she wanted to. And I didn't know if I would be able to get her body up to the top of the cliffs. So I got a paring knife from the kitchen and turned her head and cut a thin grey braid from the nape of her neck, where I didn't think anyone would notice. I unravelled the braid most of the way up, and went out into the courtyard and jumped up and caught a lime branch and hooked the braid onto a thorn. Other thorns stabbed the palm of my hand, and I abruptly let go of the branch, swearing. It sprang back into the sky, flinging droplets of blood.

 

It was the end of summer, and dawn was coming later. The moon had set and the square of sky visible above the courtyard was dove grey in the east and dark blue and speckled with a few faint stars in the west. Nobody else was awake yet, and I couldn't go back to bed, and it was too early and dark to work, so I made ablution in the dark, washed the blood and scent of bitter lime leaves off my hands, and prayed the night prayer. It was rare that I had the time or energy to pray optional prayers, but Riyamn says that God is waiting in that last quiet part of the night when the world is sleeping, and that He will grant any prayer made at that time, no matter who makes it, because He knows that His slave who is awake at that hour is truly in need.

 

I didn't ask for freedom then, it wasn't a concept that meant anything to me. Where would I have gone, and what would I have done, if freed? My whole world was the house and the tunnels underneath it and Anu and Ibu Riyamn and the children. But I asked that Maghris' soul be allowed to roam and not imprisoned underground, and that Anu Riyamn be easier on me, and that God send us a capable servant, because I couldn't do everything myself.

 

Anu Riyamn came down after the dawn prayer. I kept kneading dough for a few moments, while she clattered pots. I had felt nothing at all when it was dark and quiet before she came down, when I didn't have to acknowledge that Maghris was dead, but now the enormity of it and of how much things were going to change and how much I was not ready for that was dawning on me, I was starting to be scared. I couldn't deal with Anu Riyamn while I was scared. So I just said it.

 

"Anu Riyamn, we must cook the funeral meats today," I said.

 

"What? For who?"

 

"For your servant." If I said her name I would cry.

 

"Some of my children didn’t have funeral meats, may God have mercy on them. We don’t cook funeral meats for slaves."

 

I had never thought of Maghris as a slave. I guessed that meant I was a slave too.

 

"Never mind, Yzid will deal with the burial when he gets in. I told him to buy a new slave, Maghris hasn’t been any use for months, but he keeps putting it off, so I suppose I’ll have to do everything myself. Where are the beans from last night?"

 

"Over there." I got the pot from a low shelf and began to mash them.

 

‘You were supposed to do that _before_ breakfast Xhind, and now I have to wait for you to be done. Why didn’t you do it earlier?’

 

‘I didn’t have time.’

 

‘You should have gotten up earlier so you would have time. I was up praying the night prayer.’ Explaining that I was too would only convince her that I was lying and make her angrier, so I stayed silent. ‘I can’t leave you alone for a minute.’ She slapped the kettle onto the sticks over the fire. ‘What did you do with the body?’

 

‘Do with it?’ I began to panic. Anu Riyamn opened the curtain to our room.

 

‘For God's sake, the mat's going to stain. Why are you just standing there, move! Take the clothes off and shroud the body in the sheet, it's old anyhow. Put her on the floor, before it stains, hurry.’

 

I hesitated and touched Maghris' body only gingerly, which annoyed Anu Riyamn even more. It was unpleasantly cool and squishy and it didn't seem like Maghris at all. She had always been strong and hard-muscled and bold.

 

Anu Riyamn carried on giving me instructions while she mixed the beans with ground cumin and cut cucumbers and boiled water for tea, and then sent me off to the washroom with a blob of soft soap and pot of hot water and orders to wash very well, she wouldn't have me touching the bread with filthy hands. Some part of me bristled at the implication that Maghris needed to be washed off my hands like excrement, but that part was separated from the rest of me by a layer of cotton wool. Muffled. Buried. It was hardly any effort at all to suppress my anger.

 

* * *

 

The sun was well up when the gong rang and Amnah came down with the key to let Yzid in. His voice boomed in the courtyard, and children’s feet pattered on the stairs. I stuck my head out the kitchen door, and watched the kids jumping around trying to get his attention, the taller ones reaching into his pockets. They found something and ran with it, others chased them. Yzid went upstairs and I heard his low voice and Anu Riyamn’s higher one. She was clearly complaining about something – I thought I heard the word ‘slave’ several times, the sound of the palate click in it carries. The kids were still running around. Normally I might have gone and talked to Orrnah, since Anu Riyamn wasn’t around and Amnah had gone too, but their shrieking and their laughter seemed wrong today, it jarred my nerves. So I set to scouring the breakfast platter.

 

The kids tired themselves out and played in the courtyard more quietly, and eventually Yzid came down, rolling his prayer beads between his fingers. He asked me to boil water, and I set a tray for tea. He chattered about how beautiful the water was this morning, and fish, and a pearl someone had found. He didn’t say anything about Maghris, and I couldn’t, but Anu Riyamn must have told him. I wondered why he didn’t think her death important enough to mention. He took the tray and went back upstairs. A toddler cried. The rooster crowed. It was still hot enough by mid-morning that everyone was slow and sleepy. The house was as quiet as it ever got.

 

It was hot enough that our room was starting to smell slightly sickening. I picked sage and mint from the garden and tucked them into Maghris’ shroud, and re-lit a mostly-burned lump of frankincense. It helped for a while, but then it faded and the room began to smell of loose bowels and death again. Anu Riyamn was going to be annoyed by that, but there was nothing more I could do. I spent the rest of the morning washing laundry and only got through some of it – it had built up in the time Maghris had been sick. Anu Riyamn would continue to be annoyed about that too, but I was tired and it was hot and I could not sleep in our room with Maghris’ corpse, so after the noon prayer I lay down in the relative cool of the shade under the fruit trees in the middle of the courtyard. High up in the lime tree, I could just make out strands of grey hair waving listlessly in the breeze.

 

The sound of the gate closing and the key turning in the lock woke me. My head throbbed and my long shirt was stuck to me with sweat. I had a blurry recollection of strange dreams – an image of the skull of a bird with silver thread wound through the eye sockets was all that remained.

 

Men’s voices sounded in the courtyard and feet slapped the flagstones. Yzid was back, and with him two wiry, deeply-tanned men he employed sometimes to move furniture. They were dressed in striped wrap skirts and their heads were shaven and they were so alike I imagined they were brothers. From the trees, I watched them file silently into the kitchen.

 

The men came back out into the courtyard bearing Maghris’ shrouded corpse on a stretcher made of two long poles and a piece of net. It was much too long for her, she wasn’t much taller than me and I was less than five feet tall then. Yzid came before them and caught sight of me in the greenery – I suppose my light blue turban gave me away – and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out. I tripped sleepily over the cracked pots planted with mint, but he helped me right myself and brushed the dirt off my back.

 

‘Right, that’ll do,’ he said, and pushed me in front of him to the gate. He turned the enormous iron key in the lock and swung the gate open. The men passed through into the street bearing the stretcher. I looked out at the red stone foundation of the house across the street from ours, and the narrow, concave alley paved with the same stone.

 

‘Well, go on,’ Yzid said.

 

‘Wh-what –‘ I sputtered. I had never been out of the house, ever. I had long ago given up wanting to. The house was safe, and the streets were full of thieves and beggars and prostitutes and men who looked at women with hunger and stole children. Or so I was told. Looking down over the roof wall into the alleys below, I had never seen more than peddlars and neighbor ladies carrying their shopping and boys coming home from school, but I had no doubt that I was better off where I was. Even Anu Riyamn mostly stayed home, and she was afraid of nothing.

 

‘All those years you spent begging me to take you outside, and now you hang back? You have no courage anymore, Xhind.’

 

I had begged Yzid to take me with him, when I was very small and hadn’t yet learned how much was too much to ask. And Yzid had spent years telling me it was best that I stay home, and Maghris had spent years telling me I was safe inside and there was nothing for me outside. Anu Riyamn had spent years talking about nusjan whores and thieves and shooting glances at me.

 

‘You’re not much of a funeral procession, but you’re the closest thing she had to children. Even a slave shouldn’t go to their grave alone. ’

 

I would rather have jumped off the roof than gone through that gate, but Yzid was looking at me expectantly, and it would be wrong to let Maghris be carried to her grave by unknown fishermen, with no mourners. So I said the verses for protection from evil and stepped out into the street.


	2. The City

The alley was so narrow that I could have touched both walls if I stretched out my arms, which I did not, because I was not a child. But it was narrow enough that when we came to corners, the fishermen had to stand the stretcher up on its end and pivot it. I was afraid that Maghris would slide off, but they had tied her tightly to the poles with rope. She hung from the poles by a rope passed under her arms and I had to look away. 

The men halted suddenly and said something I couldn’t understand, and we had to back up and go down a different alley and wait for a boy with a donkey carrying a huge load of sticks to pass. I peered around the fishermen and caught a glimpse of it - I had never seen a donkey from close up. I could smell it. Its eyes were rimmed in white and its mane bristly. It kept its head down and trudged by without looking at us, but the boy leading it looked at us and the corpse with interest. 

‘Fiiiiiirewood!’ He shouted, but the fishermen shook their heads and he disappeared down the alley. Maghris used to go out and come back loaded down with firewood; she bought it at the market herself, where it was cheaper, until she got old and her hips hurt too much to walk that far carrying a pile of sticks as big as she was. Then Ba sent a boy with the wood and we stacked it under the balcony. The sun was past its zenith and the alleys were in shade now. People would be waking up and starting to cook dinner soon. I should be starting on dinner soon. Anu Riyamn was not going to be happy.

‘You’re probably wondering why her feet are sticking out,’ Yzid said. I had noticed that someone had uncovered her furry tan paws, but I hadn’t wondered at it. He continued without waiting for me to reply: ‘It’s so that she can go walking, to the next world. My grandmother used to say that the dead climbed up the mountains and then up the clouds, like stairs, to heaven.’ 

I didn’t know what to make of that. I’d always heard from Anu Riyamn that the angels separated your soul from your body in the grave and carried the soul up to heaven. I wondered who to believe and if any of them actually knew or if they were just guessing. But whenever anyone asked why and how about that sort of thing, Anu Riyamn said that God said in his book, and that was that. Only Riyamn and Yzid could read the book, but Anu Riyamn knew all about what God said.

While we were in the alleys, I was between the hindmost fisherman and Yzid, with the walls close on either side. But then we emerged onto a wider road, and there were people passing on our left side, and children hanging out of the first floor windows. On the ground floor, only a few feet away from me, a young man opened a large set of horizontal shutters in the front of the building, propped the lower one up with sticks to form a shelf and the upper one up to form a shade. Other people were doing the same thing, setting out baskets of oranges and dates, hanging up clothing and cages that held little red or yellow birds. Donkeys brayed, the air smelled of roast meat and smoke and manure and piss. There were more people than I had ever seen in my life, all around me, laughing and talking over each other, and I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I began to shake. My chest hurt and my heart was pounding and I couldn’t breathe. I should never have left the house. I was going to die.

Yzid put his hand on my shoulder and propelled me forward. ‘Why are you stopping?’

‘Can’t breathe,’ I said.

‘If you can breathe well enough to talk, you can walk. Move it, you’re holding up the whole street.’ An old woman with a tall basket strapped to her back cut around us and snapped something at Yzid. A boy with a tray of bread balanced on his head darted around us in her wake. Everything seemed very far away. I couldn’t move. My hands were going numb.

‘I’m going to die,’ I said.

‘Helinir’s tits,’ Yzid said. He bent his knees, passed his arm in front of me, and picked me up under the arms. He’d lost his right arm to a shark years ago, but his left arm was strong. He yelled at someone to shut up in pidgin and walked on with me clamped against his side. He was holding me so tight I could hardly breathe at all and I was afraid I was going to throw up on him and then die. 

Yzid hurried down a smaller side-street, past cages of live pigeons and chickens and stranger birds. It stank of old blood and wet feathers and bird shit, but we were soon past. Yzid stopped and set me back on my feet. The alley was quiet and empty. I drew a breath. The edges of my vision cleared. 

‘Better now?’ He asked. 

I nodded, and then burst into tears and covered my face with my hands. I was still too scared and embarrassed to say anything, but he wasn’t angry. He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me ahead of him, not un-gently, for him. 

We came to a small shady courtyard of blackened red brick lined with green plants. The air was moist and smelled of sweet basil and moss. The courtyard was an irregular triangle with several alleys opening off it, and there was a tall iron pump in the centre. Yzid put all his weight on the great arm, nearly swinging from it, and pumped a great gush of water into a bucket set on the ground. He drank, and then passed it to me. It was cold and clear and tasted faintly of iron. 

‘It’s just your nerves,’ Yzid said. ‘If we hurry we may catch up with the men before they reach the cliffs. We’ll go through the Sandstone Gate, but you don’t know the way, so hold onto my sash, and don’t fall behind.’ He unwound a few loops of the sash around his waist, retied it so the end fell behind him, and held it out to me. ‘You’re nusjan, a little afternoon crowd can’t faze you.’ He turned and entered one of the alleys. The houses on either side nearly touched several stories above, leaving only a thin blue ribbon of sky. It was strange and a little claustrophobic, but it was cool and quiet and there was nobody but me and Yzid. He walked more briskly, which was probably easy for him, but soon made my calves and lungs burn. I was used to hard work and climbing stairs, but not to walking long distances, and I only came up to Yzid’s chest. I developed a cramp, told Yzid that I needed to stop, and stood holding my side and trying to breathe. 

‘That’s enough rest,’ he said, and started off again. ‘I don’t think we’re going to make it in time at this rate.’ His legs were a lot longer than mine, and the cramp in my side never went away, but after walking through what seemed like several cities, we emerged into a street. I caught glimpses of an arched gate through the passers-by, but I was too short to see much until we were nearly at the gate. It wasn’t much bigger than an ordinary door, and only two people could pass. If someone had a large load or a pack animal, traffic in the other direction halted while they went through. We waited for a while, creeping forward, and I tried to tell myself that I was a nusjan, I was strong, I could carry buckets of water or wet laundry up several flights of stairs, being packed in with scores of people shouldn’t bother me, but I still wanted to bolt and could barely breathe. But there was nowhere to go, and eventually our turn came to step through the gate and into the open desert.

I liked the desert better than the city. I could see a long way, there were little flat-topped trees and moving black specks in the distance (donkeys? Goats?), and the people were mostly confined to the road flowing back into the city. We walked beside the road, not on it, because it was quicker, until the crowds thinned out. I could handle the people, as long as they were on the road and away from me, and there weren’t as many outside the city walls. Or maybe they just didn’t seem as overwhelming out under the vastness of the sky and the sand. I’d heard the desert had sand dunes like waves and camels sailed it like ships (when I was small I took the metaphor literally and thought a camel really was a type of ship), but this one was more like hard-packed grit and pebbles with stones scattered across the surface. It was mostly flat, no hills of sand. I wasn’t sure if it counted as desert, but I didn’t want to ask and sound stupid.

It was late afternoon and scorching hot, so I pulled the end of my turban-cloth across my face. The red cliffs rose up and up, with darker spots along the lower portion. I could see a few little white dots which were probably people, although they might have been animals, ascending the cliff. There must be paths. The foot of the cliff was hazy, but it looked like there were hillocks of rusty-tinted light brown sand, and indistinct jumbles of straight lines that might be houses.

We walked and walked, and when I could hardly lift my bruised feet anymore – I didn’t own sandals – we came over a rise and looked down at a disorganized collection of shacks and tents in a strip along the base of the cliff. There were mostly-naked children and scrawny dogs running around, and people lying in the shade of the tents, visible because the sides were rolled up or just had gaps. A few women were cooking over tiny dung fires. We walked down the path into the village, and some of the kids swarmed around and pulled on Yzid’s clothes. He took something out of his sash, probably a clump of dates, and threw it, and the kids went running after it. 

We walked along the base of the cliffs, but there were no men in blue-striped wrap skirts and no stretchers. Yzid asked if I could see them anywhere, and I scanned the cliffs, but I couldn’t. There wasn’t anyone at all visible from where I stood. He seemed disappointed, and I kept looking but didn’t find them. 

There were steps cut into the cliffs, narrow winding staircases like folded paper chains, that went up and up and looped around ledges and protruding lumps of rock. The steps were not deep enough to fit Yzid’s feet comfortably, and the edges were worn smooth, so he went up sideways with his hand on the wall, but they were perfect for me, although I was so tired I was hard-pressed to climb. It seemed like we had climbed forever and would keep on climbing forever, but then Yzid left the stairs at a wide ledge fenced with poles and rope and squatted for a time with his back to the cliff, panting. 

I squatted near him and looked out through the ropes at the city in the distance. I had never seen it before, and it was grander and more chaotic than anything I’d imagined. There were at least half a dozen walled areas clumped together like soft dates, several towers, a forest of minarets, and masses of houses that continued even outside the walls, down nearly to the bay, blue and hazy in the distance and hemmed by more red hills. A line of what looked like ants and were probably animals crept across the desert from the eastern mountains. I inched forward and looked straight down over the ledge to see how far up we were. The shacks and tents and children running around were very small and I quickly started to feel dizzy and sat down on my rear. Yzid was watching me. 

‘Why did you move back?’ He asked.

‘I didn’t want to fall,’ I said. I didn’t want to admit that I was dizzy and afraid of heights, because weak was the worst thing I could be, besides nusjan.

‘You won’t fall, there’s a rope.’ He seemed to be expecting me to go back up to the edge. I stayed put.

‘I’m small,’ I said. ‘There are holes I could fall through. And then you would have two bodies to bury.’ I wondered if I would have any funeral at all, if I died. Of course I wouldn’t. Yzid could just sling me over his shoulder. I had an image of him carrying my corpse through town, like a sack of rice, and knew why it was important to have a funeral, to have prayers for the dead and good clothes and a procession and neighbours to come eat roast goat and remember the dead. To matter, to be more than just a chore to be dealt with, a corpse hauled away and disposed of like a dog that died in the street and started to smell. 

‘You’re afraid of heights, aren’t you.’ He slapped the ground and laughed, too loudly. It echoed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a child’s head was poking out of a square doorway farther down the cliff. I thought it was a girl, with straight black hair cut short. She saw me looking at her and darted back inside. A moment later, a man appeared.

His horns were enormous, more than half his height and spiralled and slanting back from his head and angling out. They were black and gleamed in the sun as though he’d oiled them. I thought they must have been heavy, but he stood up straight and proud, wearing a black cotton jacket with buttons and a long wrap skirt smudged with the red dust that was everywhere. Two neat black hooves and brown furred ankles stuck out beneath his skirt. He had a very large nose with a hump in it, and his skin was lighter than mine. He stood squinting and then blinking in the sun for a few moments, and then opened his eyes and stepped out onto the ledge. 

 

I knew that I was staring, and I was afraid that I was gaping too, but he looked at me kindly and greeted me in thickly-accented Bardaket and then said that his lizard was Takata. I was too confused and off-balance to laugh, but I stuttered out a greeting, and then Yzid interrupted me and shook the man’s hand and greeted him with enthusiasm in Bilarni. The man swept his arm to direct us indoors, and Yzid grabbed my shoulder and pulled me with him through the doorway cut into the rock, still chattering away. 

It was dark inside, but I guessed from the echoes that the room was empty but not very large. Takata was behind us, but Yzid still had his hand on my shoulder, and he seemed to know where he was going. I could hear people talking quietly somewhere inside.

We went around a corner into a narrow passage that gradually grew brighter, and then entered a room carpeted with palm mats and lit by a several oil lamps with reflectors. There were half a dozen children sitting cross-legged on the floor, writing carefully in Bilarni on pieces of paper set on lap desks with inkwells. The youngest had inky fingerprints on his cheek and looked to be about four years old, and the oldest was about fourteen. The older ones had spiral horns like Takata’s but shorter. They looked at me with curiosity. I was suddenly very conscious of my turban covering my horns. 

Takata took a lamp and led us through into another room, carved out of rock like the others. This one had bookshelves stacked with codexes and a few scrolls, and a few trunks of black wood, deeply carved. Takata produced cushions from a trunk and arranged them on the floor and directed us to sit. He said something to Yzid and ducked through a doorway into yet another room. 

Yzid sighed and leaned back on his elbows on one of the trunks. I ran my fingertips along the worn embroidery on the cushions. I was terrible at embroidery, so I wasn’t allowed to do it, but I knew how much work had gone into those cushions. 

We were tired, and we waited in silence. I would have been happy to stay there indefinitely. It was dim, with only one lamp, and a bit dusty, but cool and quiet except for the children talking softly in the other room. The children at home mostly ran around shrieking, except for Amnah, who was too old for that. 

Takata came back with a tea tray, and I stood up to take it, but he waved me away. I stood awkwardly, wondering what I was supposed to do, while he set the tray down, poured a bit of tea into a cup, tasted it, shook his head, put the teapot back down, and said something to Yzid.

‘Sit down,’ Yzid said, and then carried on talking to Takata in Bilarni. I sat, waited a few minutes, and then poured a little tea into a cup and offered it to Takata. He looked a little sad, but took it and tasted and nodded. He took the teapot from me and poured and handed me a cup, which I gave to Yzid. He handed me another one, and I held onto it and cringed because I was pretty sure that was not how the tea service was supposed to go and I was going to get yelled at. Yzid’s guests were the only ones I served, and they always drank coffee.

“Please drink,” Takata said to me, and then turned his attention back to Yzid. They talked, and I drank tea with thyme and eventually grew sleepy and stopped waiting for someone to be angry with me. My eyelids were beginning to droop when Yzid said something to me.

‘Pardon, Baba?’ I asked.

‘He wants to know your name.’ Takata was looking at me.

‘Xhind,’ I said.

‘The tree that grows in the mountains,’ Takata said. 

‘You speak Bardaket,’ I said. It was rather stupid of me, but I was surprised. He hesitated over the click in ‘mountain’ and his vowels were still weirdly distorted, but it was comprehensible. I tried to change the subject. ‘Yes, it’s a thorn tree that’s resistant to magic, used as a charm for protection from sorcery and jan. Sheep don’t eat it.’

Takata didn’t look like he understood. Yzid translated into Bilarni.

Takata said, ‘Forgive me, I don’t speak Bardaket, but I speak Old Telmaket a little. Old Telmaket is…a child language…’ He cast around for a word.

‘Children speak it?’ I asked.

Yzid said, ‘No, he means the tongues are related, but I don’t think they’re as close as mother and daughter. Our tribe migrated to Bardak from the north, and they’ve been there a long time. A few hundred years probably.’ It hadn’t occurred to me that they hadn’t always lived in Bardak. If there were stories about the north, I had never heard them.

‘This is true,’ Takata said, ‘but I mean that we spoke Old Telmaket when I was a child, but now we speak Bilarni. My children speak a few words of Telmaket, but they speak mainly Bilarni and pidgin. They have to.’ Takata looked sad, and I didn’t really understand why. ‘I thought I remembered Telmaket, but I forget so much.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Do you read?’

‘Yes. A little. I mean, I learned once.’ I had not tried to read in years; there hadn’t been any reason to, or any time. And reading had always been hard for me.

‘What language?’

“Bilarni.”

Takata got up and went to a bookshelf and pulled out a few books and leafed through them before putting them back. Then he turned and held a slim volume out to me. I stared at it and at his long black fingernails briefly before taking the book. 

It was a picture-book, with little paintings of animals on each page, and a few lines of large, clear script in black ink with diacritical marks in red ink below. It was intended for children learning to read. Even Riyamn hadn’t had such a book; he’d learned with words drawn in charcoal on a piece of broken plank. I looked at the pictures for a few minutes and then thanked Takata and held the book out to him. 

‘No,’ Takata said. ‘Learn the book and bring me it.’

‘It might get lost,’ I said, which was code for ‘Anu Riyamn might confiscate it.’ Books like that were not meant for people like me, and it had images in it. Also, the kids would not be gentle with it if they found it.

I tentatively put the book back on my lap. Takata nodded his approval and resumed talking to Yzid. 

A child came in some time later and said something to Takata. Some decision was made, and Yzid climbed laboriously to his feet and stretched his back. My legs felt like they were made of clay, heavy and difficult to manipulate. 

Dusk was falling outside. It wasn’t quite dark enough to need a lantern, but it would be soon, and there were a lot of steps between us and the ground. I could hear the urgency in Takata’s voice as he spoke to Yzid, and then thanked me for talking to him and said goodbye.

As we started down the stairs, Yzid said, ‘Be sure that it doesn’t get lost. Actually, give it to me.’ I handed it over with some relief, and he stuck it into his sash.

Going up the stairs had been physically difficult, but going down was frightening. The sun was low in the sky and the cliff was in shadow, and it was a long, long way down a lot of very small steps. If either of us fell, we would plummet all the way to the bottom and die. Looking at the drop was making me dizzy again, so I put my hand on the wall and went down one stair at a time, looking at my feet.

When we stepped onto the sand, Yzid said, ‘I hope the men went home and aren’t waiting somewhere.’ We walked for a while. ‘You will have to return that book, make sure you remind me.’

‘Yes, Ba.’ So there would be a next time – maybe, if Yzid had time. I didn’t expect it to happen, he would probably just take the book back himself to save himself the trouble of taking me along, and so as not to take me away from my work. 

The trip hadn’t been a success, Maghris had had no funeral procession and I did not know what had happened to her corpse, but I was glad to have made the trip. Glad wasn’t the right word; I didn’t feel happy or sad, just blank and tired, but I was…grateful, I guess, to Yzid for bringing me, and to God, because I had met Takata. I had seen other nusjan, and they were not all whores and thieves.

#

By the time we got back into the city, I was so tired I could barely move my feet, and I kept bumping into people and donkeys. Yzid told me to wait, and I leaned against a doorjamb while he went off somewhere. I closed my eyes and dozed for a while, and was surprised when he picked me up and dumped me on top of a donkey. I slumped forward and pressed my face to its neck next to its scratchy mane and didn’t care if anyone thought me improper. Yzid was walking ahead and a child was leading the donkey through a market. There were people close on all sides, and vendors shouting about their wares and their prices, and bright lanterns like little moons hovering close overhead, but I was so tired that I fell asleep and woke only briefly when Yzid stopped in front of our gate and made me get off the donkey. I walked through the courtyard half in a dream and fell into bed.


	3. The Mirne Festival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: there is some minor drug use in this chapter, also child abuse, blood, and vomit. (It's not as bad as it sounds though).

Anu Riyamn woke me up after dawn the next morning by whapping me repeatedly with the broom. The handle, not the bristles. I startled and every muscle in my body cramped. I whimpered involuntarily and I think the only thing that saved me from being dragged bodily off my mat and into the kitchen was Anu Riyamn's bad back and reluctance to touch me. But I managed to get to my feet. My whole body hurt and I felt like I'd only just fallen asleep. Anu Riyamn hit me across the back with the broom and my composure slipped. 

“I’m trying to move, what do you want from me?” I said.

“I want to be able to rely on you to get up on time and do your work!” She continued to beat me across the back with the broom handle until I guess she decided she was done. “Now get to work, or I’ll have you whipped.”

#

Maghris had made making bread look easy, but I still wasn't much good at it - some of it was too thick, some of it was too thin, some of it I burnt, and Anu Riyamn was unhappy with all of it. I burnt my fingers turning it and burnt my wrists on the edges of the concave piece of metal set on rocks the bread was cooked on. The rest of the day wasn't much better. There was a lot of work that had gone undone the last month, and I wasn't making much progress on it, and if I did, the daily work went undone. 

Amnah and Orrnah washed the upstairs floors, which hadn’t been done in weeks. As much as they complained about it, they seemed to have a good time splashing each other with water and shrieking at bugs that scurried away from the flood. While they did that, I cleaned the privy and made a mess of another meal. By the time Anu Riyamn finally let me go to bed, I was exhausted and sore all over. I lay alone on the bed I had shared with Maghris and cried myself to sleep.

#

Our previously pleasant vine-covered room was so empty without Maghris. The whole house was. I didn’t know what had happened to her body or her soul, and I knew that I had failed her. I asked God that I might just lie down and cease to exist, but my prayer was not granted. My heart still beat and my body went on without my will, and so my will was forced to catch up. I would wake at the call to prayer before dawn and wish to not be alive today, but my bladder forced me to get up and visit the privy, and my gurgling stomach forced me to eat, and my fear of homelessness and Anu Riyamn forced me to work. 

That day was Anu Riyamn's day, but Yzid was late. It was mid-morning when he showed up, and Anu Riyamn asked him if he'd found her a servant yet, while the kids jumped around and yelled and tugged on his clothing. 

'This should have been done weeks ago,' she said. 'I told you she wasn't going to get better, I told you to find another slave, and to do it before it became a problem, but you don't listen to me.'

I couldn't hear what Yzid said. He was speaking so quietly that he was probably trying to avoid being overheard. Anu Riyamn had no such compunctions.

'Xhind is useless...no, she's old enough now Yzid, and she still gets everything wrong. Nusjan are untrustworthy, they aren't good for anything but the most basic labour, I need someone who can cook and do laundry without ruining it all, I'm worn out...I know they're expensive, but surely you can find something. Even just someone to come mornings until you can find a slave you can afford. '

#

Yzid brought a woman one day about mid-morning. She was tall and gaunt and wrinkled and wore a length of faded orange cotton which her skinny brown shins stuck out of. She grinned and showed teeth stained bright orange and pointed at my turban and made a joke which she seemed to find very funny. I hated her immediately. 

I was not in the mood for joking and tired of being made fun of, and once a new servant actually showed up, I found I didn’t want anyone barging in and trying to replace Maghris. I communicated my dislike of her by refusing to even try to talk to her. Yzid spoke to her in pidgin, and they seemed to understand each other, but the sentences were so broken and strangely accented and there were so many unknown words that I didn't understand much. The woman only shrugged at my hostility and patted my head and got to work.

She made yellow rice with strange spices and fried fish with chillies, which Anu Riyamn did not like and the kids did not want to eat. I was convinced she would bring Anu Riyamn’s wrath down on both of us by doing things wrong, but Anu Riyamn didn’t say a single hard word to her. I was surprised when the servant left in the early afternoon and didn’t come back that day, as I had been expecting her to share my sleeping mat. 

With her help I got the laundry done in a week and then we cleaned the courtyard and started on the upstairs rooms. Her name was Alandriet, which she told me even though I hadn’t asked and didn’t care. She laughed uproariously at my attempts to make bread, but she showed me how to flip the bread without burning it or myself, and an easier way to sift the chaff from the wheat. She looked astonished when I was grinding the flour and tried with much gesticulating to tell me to buy something, but I couldn't tell what it was. I still wasn't that good at making bread, but I was better, and Anu Riyamn didn't hit me when Alandriet was around. I admitted to myself that maybe I shouldn’t hate Alandriet after all. 

I had lost count of the days since Maghris had died, and felt guilty about it. Anu Riyamn asked Yzid if he'd found a new slave yet every day he came. I watched lutu birds pull the last strands of silver hair from the thorn on the lime tree. They were building a nest in one of the higher crooks, which was unusual. I couldn't remember birds ever nesting in it; it was thorny and smelled strongly of lime. But there they were, collecting twigs and bringing dry grass and weaving it together with strands of tightly curled silver hair. Maghris had wanted to be carried away, and that wasn't happening. I wondered what had happened to her body, if the men had buried it or left it up on top of the cliff for the birds. I hoped for the latter, but I didn't really think it was true, Yzid had said that wasn't done any more. There was a black oily stone of guilt sitting in my gut. There wasn't anything more I could do, so I tried to ignore it, but the raucous lutu birds reminded me every morning and evening.

#

And then one morning, Alandriet didn't show up. I made bread for breakfast, but I was nervous about doing it wrong and I knocked the metal into the coals and burned my clothing and got ash on some of the bread I'd already made, which was in a basket next to the fire. Anu Riyamn shouted at me and then threw up her hands and took the basket and stomped off.

'But why isn't she here,' Anu Riyamn asked Yzid when he showed up. Luckily it was her day.

'It's their festival, the mirne flower thing, you know. You saw her wearing orange,' Yzid said.

'Already? I didn't hear the drums.'

'It's not till next week, but they have to get ready. Decorations, cooking, fancy clothes, all that. You hear them every year, weren’t you paying attention?'

Anu Riyamn huffed. 'Well I don't see why she can't still show up for work, that's what you're paying her for.' She paused. 'You did pay her, didn't you?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Please find me a slave, Yzid. There must be something for sale at the festival.'

'It's not that sort of a festival.’

'I don't care. Just find someone, there's more than I can do alone. But not another Susa-worshipper, she puts mirne in everything.'

Yzid laughed.

'Everything, Yzid! She fed it to the kids, I couldn't figure out why they were so docile all of a sudden, until I looked at their tongues and they were bright orange! Xhind told me the maid had given them something orange and sticky! God preserve us from these heathens...'

We had had a blissfully quiet morning and a long nap, the day Alandriet fed the kids mirne. I still had a sizeable pile of sticky little balls folded up in a leaf which she'd given me, and I was sorely tempted to use it some days just before noon, when it was hot and the smaller kids were cranky and refused to sleep and the older ones were tired of dealing with them and Anu Riyamn sent them all down to the courtyard so she could rest. Unfortunately, mirne left tell-tale orange stains in their mouths and a sweet scent on their breath. I would definitely get caught if I tried it again. But when the kids made goat noises at me or pushed each other near the fire or tried to snatch bits of whatever I was cooking or unwrap my turban and I wasn't allowed to say anything to them, the thought that I could slip them mirne paste and have some peace was a comfort. Even if I could never actually do it. 

#

A few days later I woke to the sound of the door gong before the call to the dawn prayer. It was probably just Yzid. I threw my turban cloth over my head and padded out into the courtyard. The lutu birds were silent and the sky was greying, but there were still stars visible. 

It was Yzid. I could hear him talking to someone outside. I opened the gate and he swung it back all the way and someone came through, with something bulky behind them, and then someone else. Their white striped wrap skirts were bright in the pre-dawn dimness, and so was the long bundle between them. For a moment I was convinced that the fisherman had been wandering around the cliffs and through the desert and finally made it back, and they'd brought Maghris' corpse with them. I stood frozen under the trees and watched as the fishermen carried the swinging bundle past, back into the kitchen. It smelled strongly of salt and fish and blood. They set their burden down near the kitchen and it let out a shriek. So did I. 

'Xhind!' Yzid said. 'Shut up, you'll wake everyone! 

'What is it?' I asked.

'What is what?'

'That thing!' The shrouded bundle in the net moaned, and I wanted to scream and run, but I was too frightened to move.

'What thing? In the net? It's just a girl. Come here, I need your help.'

'Is she dead?' I asked. 

'No of course she's not dead, why would you think that? She just screamed, and I wouldn’t have hauled a dead slave all this way.' He clapped his hand to my turban and pulled me towards him. 'Boil some water. I already sent Haroun for the doctor. Hurry!' He pushed me towards the kitchen.

I stirred the fire up and pumped water while Yzid dismissed the fishermen and did something to the bundle. I stood and watched once the kettle was on. It was indeed a woman, a fat one, lying in a pile of crumped canvas and fishing net and what looked like coils of tarred black rope. The bits of her that stuck out of the canvas wrapping were pale, and the canvas was stained with something dark that smelled of blood. She was writhing slightly and moaning, which did nothing to convince me that she wasn't something undead. Yzid loosened something tied around her thigh, waited a few minutes, and then tightened it again, pulling hard. She screamed. Yzid put his hand over her mouth, then swore and tried to yank his hand away, but couldn't. She'd sunk her teeth into his hand. He froze and she released his hand, and he backhanded her across the face with it. Blood splattered on her face and the flagstones. He clamped his hand under the stump of his left arm and stomped around swearing fiercely, and ordered me to chew some lime leaves and get him a bandage. She'd nearly torn a chunk off the side of his hand. 

I looked at the woman wrapped in fish-smelling canvas. The blood stains were big. 

'Should I chew some lime leaves for her too?' I asked.

'No, goddamnit!' I hardly ever saw Yzid angry. It was scaring me. 'No, the doctor will take care of it. She was unconscious earlier, wish she'd stayed that way.'

'Where did you get her?' I still wasn't at all certain she was human and really alive.

‘Found her in the sea. Tallulah was awake early, heard splashing and looked for the source of the noise. This toothy bitch – ‘ he kicked her foot ‘was floating in the shallows. Tallulah’s small but she’s strong and she dragged her onto the beach, saw the blood on her thigh, and tied it up with her headscarf. If she lives we'll have a new slave for fairly cheap, thanks be to God.'

“How did she get the wound?” I asked.

“A shark attacked her. She’s lucky it didn’t take her leg off, or eat her up.”

Dr. Kanafani arrived then, and I poured the hot water into one urn and cold water into another one and carried them carefully over to where the woman lay, along with a pile of rags and a sack of sea salt Yzid asked for. The doctor knelt on the stones next to the girl, winced and shuffled his knees around, and opened his satchel and arranged his tools. He was tall and thin and very black and his black robe was perfectly pressed. The hair that was visible under his black crocheted cap was greyer than I remembered. He didn't come by often. 

'Is there a wound on her face?' The doctor asked in Bilarni. There was blood on her face, but it was Yzid’s. The doctor peeled the dirty canvas off the woman as matter-of-factly as you would take the lid off a pot to see if the stew was done. He glanced over her torso quickly, and then draped a clean cloth over her and moved to her lower half. Yzid saw me looking at her naked chest and caught my eye, and I wished I could dart away like a lizard and disappear into a crack in the wall. 

'No,' Yzid said. ‘That’s not her blood.’

’Whose is it?'

'Never mind. You're going to have to sit on her other leg, Xhind. Tell her when you're ready, Abel,' Yzid said in Bardaket and then remembered to translate into Bilarni for the doctor. Yzid knelt behind the girl’s head and put his hands on her shoulders to keep her still, glaring at the girl as though daring her to try and bite him again. The doctor looked pointedly at Yzid's bandaged hand and the blood seeping through, and then turned his attention to the wounds in the woman's leg. There were numerous wide gashes arranged in rough crescents on both the inside and the outside of her thigh. Each gash was at least at long as my hand, and deep. Even with the tourniquet on, they oozed blood. I could see yellow granulated fat under the skin, and then red muscle. In one place I saw bone. I was fascinated, but I had to look away and will myself not to retch and disgrace myself. 

The doctor mixed water and salt and poured it over the gashes, and then picked up a little knife bright and shiny as a mirror and trimmed tissue. I resolutely didn’t look. The girl moved even though we tried to hold her down, and bit through the stick Yzid gave her. I could tell she was trying not to scream. She eventually went limp and the doctor spent a long time stitching, moving her leg and the lamp around so he could see. 

I saw Yzid looking up at the balcony, and saw that Amnah was peering around a door on the second floor, with her charmal wrapped securely around her face and neck. I could see faces pressed to the lattices over the first floor windows, and little fingers wrapped around the slats. Yzid jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen to tell her to come down, but she shook her head and retreated inside, closing the door. 

‘Shouldn’t I go get breakfast ready?’ I asked Yzid softly, so as not to wake the girl. My knees hurt from kneeling and I felt nauseous and light-headed. 

‘No, stay put, they won’t starve. You might be needed where you are and there won’t be time to call you.’ 

The sun was well up by the time the doctor finished stitching, and sweat was beading on his forehead. He sat back and Yzid sent me to get them cold water and a basin to wash their hands in. I ducked into the far back corner of the house, behind the pump, where they were unlikely to see me, and heaved quietly onto the ground until my stomach stopped spasming. Then I pumped water, and rinsed my mouth and brought the men water to wash.

‘Let me see your hand,’ the doctor said, and Yzid reluctantly held it out. ‘That’s going to need stitches.’

‘I know.’

‘Were you just going to leave it open wide like that and hope it heals?’

‘Course not. It just wasn’t that important.’

I took the basin and threw the bloody water in the garden. It soaked down into the soil around the base of the lime tree, while the lutu birds looked down from a branch and squawked at me. I wondered if there were eggs in their nest yet.

‘Xhind,’ Yzid called. ‘Boil more water.’

Yzid clenched his teeth and tried not to make a sound while the doctor poked around in his wound with a little knife, but I could tell it was difficult for him and busied myself in the kitchen. 

The doctor asked me to wash the rest of the woman’s wounds before she woke up, and then took up a needle and began to stitch Yzid’s hand closed. There were many scrapes and a few deep cuts on the soles of her feet and on her shins and hands. I cleaned them and then the doctor pushed me gently aside and smeared them with something that looked like honey and smelled like myrrh and wrapped them in bandages, and then the men got up and slid the girl on the piece of bloody canvas through the kitchen and into what had been mine and Maghris' room. 

Yzid tied her ankles together with the old tourniquet and put his arm in the loop, and the doctor put one hand under her shoulders and one under her waist, and they slid her onto Maghris’ pallet and covered her with a sheet. She stirred and mumbled when they moved her, but she didn’t wake. The doctor looked at the sun and started cleaning his tools and slotting them back into his satchel. 

Yazid started to rub his back with his knuckles and stopped abruptly. ‘Will you stay for breakfast, Abel?’ He asked the doctor.

‘Thank you, but another time. I have to go open my office.’

‘Is there anything to eat, love?’ Yzid asked, after the doctor was gone. I made tea with the hot water and found him yesterday’s bread and vinegar and sat while he ate, in case he needed anything else. I contemplated having a drink of water, but decided not to risk throwing up again. Anu Riyamn would be down before long and the work would start again. I took the opportunity to rest and sit in silence for a while. 

#

 

Yzid finished his meal and went upstairs, probably to sleep. Anu Riyamn came down shortly thereafter and brought the kids with her, so that they could burn off some energy before afternoon and not bother their father. I was tired and achy and probably should have drank and eaten something, but the thought of it still turned my stomach, and mashing beans with oil and lime for the kids’ breakfast wasn’t helping. Anu Riyamn looked up from the bread skillet and told me to hurry up. The kids whined because they were hungry and I tried to hurry but my fingers were clumsy and I dropped the pot of cumin while trying to open it. Shards flew and cumin seeds scattered. Anu Riyamn struck me across the back several times with the broom while the kids watched and then ordered me to pick up broken pieces and save the seeds. 

The girl woke up, possibly because of the noise, and moaned, and Anu Riyamn sighed and told me to go tend to her, she’d finish with breakfast, it would be quicker and safer than letting me do it. I had no idea what tending to someone who’d been attacked by a shark might consist of, but I pumped more cold water and washed her face with it and shuffled around trying to sound busy. I drank some water and managed not to throw up. The kids ate, and Anu Riyamn yelled to me to clean up the kitchen and the courtyard once they were done, there was still blood on the ground. After much bickering and snatching of food and laughter, they all trooped back upstairs, and it was blessedly quiet. I lay down beside the slave in the cool vine-covered room and slept. She was groaning occasionally, eyes flicking open, but I was too tired to care.

#

I stewed barley with mutton and onions and carrots that evening. Squatting in front of the fire cutting things and stirring the pot, I felt so hot, like I was on the roof at midday in the summer. I could squat if I wanted, as long as no men were around. I was nusjan so nobody expected much modesty of me, and kneeling made it hard to reach things. But I was so dizzy that I had to kneel or fall into the fire, and I couldn’t eat anything I’d cooked. I drank some more water, threw it up, and lay back down on the ground beside the girl to rest for a while.

I must have fallen asleep, because Anu Riyamn shook me awake. It was getting dark, and her face swum in front of me like it was at the bottom of a barrel of water. I focused on the rusty brown triangles embroidered on the edge of her charmal. She was saying something about dishes, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was, and then I suddenly felt more ill and vomited bile onto the hem of her dress. She let me lay back down and I curled up into a ball and tried to block out the sound of the throbbing in my head. 

#

I slept for a long time and woke weak and hollowed out. I managed to walk to the kitchen by holding onto the wall, drank warm water from the jar there. Everything was still blurry and unsteady, but I didn’t feel like I would vomit. It was some indeterminate time of day. The sound of many drums and voices came from elsewhere in the city; the mirne festival had started. The throbbing noise had been real, then. It was the drums.

I heard an odd noise and thought I was imagining it, but it came again, from the direction of the bedroom. I saw the slave shifting her legs and moaning and making that high-pitched clicking noise. I dipped a mug of water and brought it to her, only spilling a little of it. She tried to sit up and fell back down with a muffled noise of pain, but propped herself up on her elbows enough to drink. Her teeth were pointed and clinked against the edge of the mug. Her eyes were hazel and her hair was black and curly at the roots and divided into several braids which lay beside and under her like coils of rope.

There were heavy footsteps on the stairs and on the flagstones of the courtyard. Anu Riyamn and Yzid were talking quietly under the trees. 

‘…they’ve all been sick for two days, Yzid, I’m really worried about Ishuza, she hasn’t been able to keep anything down and her fever isn’t going away. I need you to go to the apothecary, today,’ Anu Riyamn said. I peeked through the lattice and vines and saw them standing under the trees and I held still so they would be less likely to notice me.

‘Everything’s closed today – ‘ Yzid began.

“Please, Yzid, this is important. Little kids aren’t as strong as adults, they get sick and they die very easily. I don’t want to lose another one.”

“If you’re worried about her why don’t I go get Abel – “

“No, I don’t want a black touching my children, I don’t trust him.”

“He saved Riyamn’s life more than once,” Yzid said. “He’s the best doctor in Telmak.”

“No. Just go to the apothecary please. Ring the bell or pound on the door until they come down.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want. I’ll go in a minute, I have to see to the slave first.” Anu Riyamn headed back upstairs and Yzid came and stood in the doorway to my room.

“Are you alright Xhind?” He asked.

“I’m fine Ba.”

“Are you sick too? You look a little sweaty.”

“Yeah a bit. I was worse earlier.”

“Well just help me with this and then go back to bed,” Yzid said. He looked over my head at the girl laying on Maghris’ pallet. I looked at her too and she looked back at me. “Are there any more bandages?” Yzid asked.

“Yes Ba. I’ll get them.”

The ‘bandages’ we’d used last time were strips torn off the old sheet I’d shrouded Maghris in; it had been longer than was needed so I saved the excess. I brought the last of the strips of fabric down from the shelf and Yzid leaned on the girl’s chest again, one hand on her throat, and instructed me to cut the old bandages and remove them. They stuck to her skin over the stitches, and Yzid ordered me to just rip them off. I didn’t want to do it, but I did. I saw that her back arched when I ripped the old bandages off. It must have hurt a lot, but she didn’t make any noise. I washed the wounds in salt water and wrapped them in new bandages, and then Yzid left and it was time to cook again. I made broth, because nobody felt much like eating.

I was still very tired and dizzy and I forgot to add onion and salt to the broth. The only things I remembered were bones and water, and I used too much water. Anu Riyamn tasted the broth and asked me how I could get something so simple completely wrong and Yzid told her to let me rest, he’d send out for food and nobody would know if the house was a mess. She replied that she’d know, and have to live in it, and then the baby started crying and she went back upstairs.

‘Go back to bed before you fall into the fire, you’ve done enough for today,’ Yzid said. ‘Change her bandages again tomorrow, will you, I won’t be here.’

I nodded and lay back down beside the girl and tried to sleep, but I was shivering and my body ached and she kept throwing her arm across me. I curled up on the far side of the narrow room, and tried to sleep, but I don’t think I really did.

#

The drums got more numerous and irregular at night during the mirne festival, and the singing more excited and less organised. They kept it up most of the day and night, I had no idea how, and the constant noise wore on our nerves and kept us from sleeping at night for nearly a week each spring. Thankfully, there was a period of quiet at midday when it was too hot even for the mirne festival-goers, or they’d worn themselves out. I didn’t know what they were celebrating or how, and I’d always wondered.

Anu Riyamn said they were worshipping false idols. She said this repeatedly and with growing annoyance as the festival week wore on. She also asked God to let the righteous leave the city before he destroyed it. But he never had. I was starting to think that either he wasn’t listening, or the mirne festival didn’t offend him that much.

I used to climb the stairs up to the roof with Riyamn and Orrnah and we looked out over the ledge trying to catch a glimpse of the festival, but the buildings around us were mostly taller than ours, and we couldn’t see anything. Riyamn said there weren’t any celebrations in this part of the city, because we were in the believers’ quarter. I said that the idolaters sounded like more fun than us, and Orrnah giggled and Riyamn sputtered and asked God to forgive me. I said things like that partially to see the look on his face. Unlike Amnah, he never told on me or got mad.

#

The drums throbbed and my head vibrated along with them. I covered the ear that wasn’t pressed to the mat with my hand, and then yanked at my turban cloth and wadded it over my ear. It muffled the noise, but it didn’t block it out. I prayed that they would shut up, but they didn’t.

My mouth was dry and my throat sore, but just trying to turn over I felt like there was a heavy weight like a thick wool mattress on top of me, pressing me down. I cracked my eyes open to see if the water jar was still in the kitchen, but it was dark and my vision was blurred and I couldn’t focus well enough to tell. I closed my eyes again and tried to just give myself up to the sound of the drums and not let them bother me.

That worked about as well as you might expect. They seemed louder than ever, and thousands of voices joined in a wave of sound that rose and broke and rose again but never really subsided. I thought I picked up a thread of repeated words, but I didn’t understand any of it. 

A voice nearby was singing along, and in my confusion I thought briefly that it was my voice and I hadn’t realised I was singing, but it was low-pitched and wavering and then shifted to high and sweet and woven with another thread of clicks and trills. It echoed in my bones and made my teeth ache. I shivered, but I don’t think it was from fever. I thought I saw the girl’s throat moving where a spot of moonlight let in by the lattice illuminated it.

That voice went on and on until finally it grew weaker and then ended when the girl coughed, and I was sure it who she who had been singing. I lay and watched her cough and clutch her ribs and then I pulled myself to my hands and knees and crawled unsteadily to the kitchen and dipped a mug into the water jar, drank, and brought it to her. She drank most of it and croaked out a thank you in Bilarni and lay back down and I drank the rest and wished to God that the drums would end so that we could sleep. Her face was pale and sweaty, I was hot again and my skin felt like it was numb and disconnected from my body. I was so tired, God curse the mirne festival-goers. 

Mirne. That was it. I fumbled around in the wicker box that still held my and Maghris’ clothes and combs and tooth sticks and pulled out the leaf-wrapped package. I gave one sticky ball to the slave and ate one myself. It was bitter, and I brought us more water and then lay down on the mat, exhausted. We had been kept from rest for the sake of mirne, it was fitting that mirne should bring us rest and ease.

Mirne turned the world soft and warm and everything the moonlight touched had a golden aura around it. I lifted my hand up into a beam of moonlight and watched it wobbling in the air. It looked like it was dipped in honey. The slave looked like she was floating in a pool of honey. I touched her bare arm, but there was nothing there besides air, and silky skin. It was fascinating. She caught my hand and pushed it away, and I realised I had been stroking her arm. ‘Sorry,’ I said in Bardaket. ‘What’s your name?’

She chirruped something and then switched to a language without clicks or trills that was probably Bilarni.

I remembered that she wouldn’t be able to speak Bardaket, and switched to pidgin. “What’s your name,” I asked again.

“Jullanar,” she said.

“Chullanar?” I asked. There was no ‘j’ sound in Bardaket.

“No, Jullanar.”

“I’m Xhind.”

“Did that noise come from your mouth?” Jullanar asked.

“What, this?” I made a clicking noise with my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“How did you do that?”

I made the ‘xh’ noise a few more times.

Jullanar made a sucking noise with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She did it repeatedly for a while and then gave up. “I don’t think I can make that noise. What do people call you in pidgin?” There was a lot of Bilarni in her pidgin but I understood what she meant.

“Mostly ‘hey you.’ My friend called me Kind, but I haven’t seen her in a few years. I don’t go underground anymore.”

“How about I call you Hind? That’s actually a name and Kind isn’t.”

“I guess that’s okay.” I really wanted to be called by my real name, but she couldn’t say it.

“Hind? Where’s the bathroom?” Jullanar asked.

“Uh, are you going to be able to walk?”

“I can try,” she said. She sat up a little unsteadily and bent her bandaged leg at the knee. “No, I can’t.”

“Can you wait till Yzid gets back?” I asked.

“Who?”

“My Baba.”

“Oh. I guess I have to.” She straightened her leg and lay back down again. “It feels a little bit better now but it just hurts so much. What did you give me?’

“Mirne.”

“What’s that?”

“I think it’s a plant,” I said.

“It still hurts but I just don’t care that much,” Jullanar said.

We lay in silence for a while, listening to the drums.

“Are you Bilarni?” I asked.

“No, not originally. I’m from Sine-Iqsham.”

“Where’s that?”

“To the north-east, on the Iqsham river delta.”

“Never heard of it,” I said. “Why did you come here?”

“I was kidnapped as a child by the Bilarnis and enslaved.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say.

“We were shipwrecked and instead of swimming for land, I swam in the opposite direction, out to sea. I was nearly to land when I was bitten by a shark, and I don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t know what your Baba is planning to do with me, if he considers me a slave or if he’s planning to let me go once I’m better, but I would rather die than be enslaved again.”

“My Ba is nice, I think he’ll let you go.” If my brain hadn’t been all soft and warm and melty with mirne, I probably would have remembered that Yzid had called her a slave earlier.

“I hope so.” She sounded doubtful. 

The gong rang, and I got up to let Yzid in. I padded across the courtyard in the dark and stood watching the fireflies leaving golden trails in the air for a while before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing and got the key down to unlock the gate. I had to wrestle with the crossbar, but I eventually got it up and swung the gate open for Yzid. “What took you so long?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I said. 

“Were you asleep?”

“No.” I swayed back and forth a little where I stood, trying to remember what I was supposed to tell him. Oh, right. “Ba, can you help Chullanar get to the bathroom? She can’t walk.”

“If she can’t walk, then she can’t go, she’s too heavy for me to lift. Put a pan under her and she’ll have to go in that.”

“Okay.” He went upstairs and I went back to the kitchen and looked through the pots and pans hanging on the wall. I found a large, shallow pan and got it down. “Sorry,” I said to Jullanar. “You’ll have to go in this.”

She heaved herself up on her arms and turned her head to look at me. “I don’t know if that’s going to work.”

“Sorry,” I said, and just stood there for a while. I was very conscious that she was naked under the sheet. 

“I really have to go though, I guess we’d better try. Can you put it under me?” She threw the sheet off and I put the pan next to her hip. 

“Can you lift your butt up?” I was really embarrassed. I had never seen anyone naked before, except for babies. Jullanar pushed with her good leg and lifted her hip up, groaning in pain. I slid the pan under and left the room. I went back into the courtyard to watch the fireflies for a while, until Jullanar called me. She lifted her hip up again, I pulled the pan out, and went and emptied it in the privy and then rinsed it under the pump. It was going to have to be our permanent bathroom pan, nobody would want to put food in it again. Anu Riyamn was not going to be happy about that. 

I wondered how close morning was, and lay back down on my mat next to Jullanar. I was dizzy and nauseous and exhausted and not looking forward to the call for the dawn prayer, when the cooking and cleaning would start again. I didn’t think I was well enough to work, but I might have to.

#

The call for the dawn prayer rang out from the nearby maslat and fainter from other maslats and I reluctantly got up, stirred up the fire, and put more wood on it. I was still dizzy and weak and my head hurt. I felt like I’d hardly slept. Once the fire was going, I filled the kettle with water and put it over the fire. I went into my room to get some clean clothes to change into. I got my clothes out of the wicker box, and felt someone looking at me. Jullanar was awake. “How are you going to pray like that?” I asked.

“I don’t pray,” she said.

“Oh.” I had never encountered that before. “What kind of religion do your people have?”

“They have numerous gods, but I left when I was ten, and I’m not religious.”

I had never heard of such a thing and didn’t know quite what to think of it. “So how do you know what to do? How do you know right from wrong?”

“I still have morals and ethics, Hind. You don’t have to have a religion to teach you those. And plenty of Bilarnis have religion and behave terribly.”

“Hmm.” I did not know much about Bilarnis. Also, there were a few Bilarni words in that sentence I didn’t understand, like “ethics.”

I would normally have changed in my room but Jullanar was there and I didn’t want to take off my clothes in front of her. So I went into the storeroom and changed in the dark. When I got back, the kettle was boiling. I made a pot of tea with sage and let it steep while I made up a tray of cups and a plate of biscuits. It was getting light out and Anu Riyamn wasn’t down yet. That was unusual. I shrugged and went to pump water so I could make ablutions and pray.

When I was done praying I poured myself a cup of tea. “Do you want tea?” I called to Jullanar. “And breakfast?”

“Uh yeah I’d better.”

I poured her a cup and brought a plate of biscuits into the bedroom with my cup of tea. “How are we going to work this?”

“I can sit up.”

We were drinking tea and munching on biscuits when Yzid came down. “Nehleh is sick,” he said in Bardaket. Nehleh was Anu Riyamn’s name. “So are all the kids. Are you two all right?”

“I still don’t feel well,” I said. He asked Jullanar something in Bilarni and she replied. They talked for a few minutes. “I’m not sure if anyone is going to eat, but I’d better take some food up,” Yzid said.

“There’s a tea tray ready.”

“Thank you love, you’re a treasure.” I blushed. He left, carrying the tray.

“Some clothes would make me feel a lot better,” Jullanar said.

“I can ask Ba for you,” I replied.

“I asked him already. He said there would be nothing in the market to fit me, I’m too fat, so clothes would have to be tailored for me. And I can’t walk, so that won’t be for quite a while.”

“Maybe something of Anu Riyamn’s would fit you? She’s not that much smaller than you, especially right now.”

“Maybe. I’ll ask later.” I remembered that she had not yet interacted with Anu Riyamn and did not know what she was in for.

#

We all got better over the course of a few days, but Jullanar did not. She hadn’t been talking to me unless necessary, and I thought I must have done something wrong, since she had been so talkative that first night. I left her alone so as not to annoy her any more, and I was busy with work anyway. She didn’t complain, and I didn’t actually notice she was still sick until she threw off the sheet one day during the midday nap. 

“Are you hot?” I asked.

“Yeah I’m cooking.”

I got up and pumped some cold water and got some cloths. I wet one and lay it on her forehead, and draped another one over her chest. Five minutes later I changed them. “It’s not that hot out today,” I said.

“I feel really hot.”

“Do you feel like you’re going to throw up?”

“No, I’m just hot and my leg hurts.”

“Oh no!” I looked at her bandaged leg. “Ba told me to change the bandages every day and I completely forgot about it! Oh no.”

“It’s only been two or three days, it will probably be okay.”

“I had better change the bandages now.” 

The bandages stuck to the wounds in some places, and again I had to rip them off.

“Ouch!”

“I’m so sorry.” I felt terrible. Underneath the bandages, some of the wounds were red and swollen and smelled wrong. “I think this is getting infected,” I said. “I’ll have to tell Ba but today isn’t Anu Riyamn’s day. He’ll be here tomorrow though. I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”

“I don’t think it is. Wounds get infected, it happens.”

“If I had remembered to change the bandages it wouldn’t be infected.”

“I really don’t think so. It just happens, don’t blame yourself,” Jullanar insisted. But I did blame myself. I bandaged her leg and put cold cloths on her and then lay back down and we slept for a while. Or I did at any rate. 

“Hind?” Jullanar said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

I ran to get a bowl, and made it back just in time. She was sick, and by the time I finished cleaning the bowl, the kids were up and naptime was over. I left a few bowls in Jullanar’s reach while I swept the courtyard. She turned out to be pretty easy to take care of. I would leave a bowl and a mug of water and some cloths in her reach while I went to do something, and that was it. She hardly ever asked for anything extra.

#

Yzid came early the next morning, and I told him Jullanar was sick and her wound was infected. He seemed upset, and went to get the doctor right away. Dr. Kanafani inspected Jullanar’s leg and had a look in her mouth and left me with a box of fat grey pills and instructions on how to give them to her. 

Two days later, Jullanar sat up and said, “Hind?” I was in the kitchen. I poked my head through the door to our room. “Do you have a comb I can borrow?”

“Umm.” Most of us didn’t have the right hair texture for combs, we just combed our hair with our fingers. I opened the wicker box, and sorted through the contents. At the bottom was a carved wooden hair pick. It was similar to a wide-toothed comb. “Will this work?” 

“That should be okay.” She untied a water stained ribbon on the end of one braid and began undoing it. 

“Would you like me to do one?” I asked.

“Sure, if you’re not too busy.”

I finished drying the dishes and picked up a braid and gently began undoing it.

Amnah’s hair tumbled to her hips in loose curls; it was smooth and nearly black and shone in the sun. I always thought angels’ hair must look like hers, and I envied her it. The other girls’ hair was similar. Orrnah’s was more tightly curled and didn’t grow past her shoulder blades, which she lamented. I think she tried every hair tonic she ever heard of, but it just wouldn’t grow.

Anu Riyamn’s hair used to look Amnah’s, she said, before she had children, but now it was thin and short and lay flat against her head. I hardly ever saw it. She spent a lot of time, on feast days, arranging Amnah’s hair.

Maghris’ hair was fine and curly and dark brown at the roots shading to blonde and a little past shoulder length. There were scars where her ears had been; her ears were cut off after she was captured and enslaved, like her tongue was. She tossed a charmal loosely over her head - her people didn’t wear them, but it was the custom in our house and so she followed it like she followed our religion – but she didn’t care if the scars showed and she didn’t seem ashamed of them. 

I braided her hair for her, in eight rows straight back from her forehead, and she thanked me, and then did a much better job on my hair. 

My hair can’t decide what to be; sections of it are tightly curled and sections are kinked. Some is black and some is dark reddish brown. Maghris did it in spiralling braids, one around the crown of my head and others spinning off like moons and big loose rows like a ploughed field under my horns, where it was hard to reach. 

Hair-braiding time was one of the only times I ever took my turban or my charmal off, and I used to hide in our room at night while Maghris braided by lamplight and urge her to hurry. I was terrified that someone would walk in and see my horns, which were large by that point. But she would put her hands on my shoulders and tell me to be patient, because this was worth doing well.

Jullanar’s hair was thick and wavy and must have reached her calves. It was nearly as long as she was tall. “Do you want to wash it?” I asked.

“I can’t get up.”

“No but we can probably wash most of it in a bowl. Just not the top part.”

“Alright, if you’re not too busy.”

I brought the container of elna powder, and some water, and two big bowls. In the first bowl I mixed elna powder and a lot of water and dunked the hair in it, and in the second I rinsed it. I had to go back and forth quite a few times with bowls of water, but I used the elna water to water the garden, which needed it. Finally we were done, and Jullanar spread her hair out all over the room, and I went to make dinner.

The next day, I changed Jullanar’s bandages. I had had to ask Yzid to bring home another sheet to tear up, and he had actually done it, and done it that same day. Maybe he hadn’t been busy. “It doesn’t look as red, and it smells better,” Xhind said.

“You could smell it before?” Yzid asked.

“Yeah.”

“You must have a very good nose.”

“I guess.” I had never thought my nose was special before. “I hope so, it’s big enough.”

A week passed, and the doctor came to take Jullanar’s stitches out. He left, and came again a week later to poke at and flex her leg. “It’s not good for you to be inactive too long,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get you moving.” Dr. Kanafani and Yzid pulled Jullanar up by the armpits, and she stood, swaying and holding on to them. 

“I can’t put much weight on it,” Jullanar said.

“The muscle’s not healed yet, so you won’t be able to walk on your own yet, but if we give you a walking stick then hopefully you can get to the bathroom,” Dr. Kanafani said. 

They sat Jullanar back down and Yzid went across the courtyard and into his shop. He came back holding a thick walking stick made out of silvery wood. “Can you pull yourself up?” He asked Jullanar, hold the walking stick out. She took it and got up on her knees, put her good foot on the ground, and pushed herself up, holding on to the walking stick. She swayed in place a little, and then took a step, putting her weight on the walking stick. She took a few more. “It hurts a lot,” she said.

“It’s probably not a good idea for you to walk yet then. Try it again in a week or so, and once you can walk I’ll give you some exercises to do.” Dr. Kanafani helped Jullanar sit back down on the bed. He left soon after but Yzid hung back and gave her a package and said something to her.

#

Every morning after I made up the breakfast tray, I brought tea and breakfast for me and Jullanar into our room and we ate it together. But the day after Dr. Kanafani left, Jullanar gave me the package Yzid had given her and asked me to make her tea with that instead.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s medicinal.”

“Is it for your leg?”

“No.”

Every morning I made the tea, and every morning she drank it all, without fail, although before she had usually left some of the regular tea in her cup. “Can I try some of your tea?” I asked. It smelled good, slightly minty and herbal.

Jullanar smiled slightly and the points of her teeth showed. “No.”

“What’s in it?”

“It’s medicinal,” she repeated.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s birth control,” she said. It was a Bilarni phrase I had never heard before.

“What’s that?”

“Why don’t you ask your dad.”

But I didn’t ask Yzid. I sensed that it was not my business to be involving myself in, and if Jullanar had an embarrassing medical complaint and didn’t want to tell me, I wouldn’t ask any further. But I did wonder about it.


End file.
